


New

by VeritySilvers



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Early Relationship, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-03 17:31:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8722672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeritySilvers/pseuds/VeritySilvers
Summary: A misfire fic from the Critical Role Bang!  Vex sleeps, and Percy watches her.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I volunteered to write a fic for @tophatgoat's artwork (www.tophatgoat.tumblr.com), and completely misread the artwork description when I chose it. It was actually a great picture of Vax and Percy, which I turned into the fic Brothers. But before my error was pointed out to me, I wrote a fun little fic with Vex and Percy, and thought it was worth sharing despite my mistake.
> 
> Originally posted on Tumblr, a misfire for the Critical Role Bang 2016.

It's still new, this kind of familiarity. This kind of trust.  
  
Vex is asleep. There are faint blue bruises in the hollows beneath her eyes, like a child pressed dirty thumbprints there: she hasn't been sleeping well or easily lately, and the smudged bruises beneath her eyes speak eloquently as to the power of her nightmares. She needs this sleep, as much as she can manage, to rest enough that those bruises fade away and her mind is strong enough to ignore the troubling images her subconscious presents to her in the quiet lonely hours of the night.  
  
Her face doesn't change overly much in sleep: a certain peacefulness, perhaps, has settled over her. Her lively expressive face is still for once, muscles slack and tension vanished.  
  
She doesn't look younger, Percy thinks. She doesn't look innocent, or softer, or any half-a-dozen trite romantic fancies bards sing about.  
  
She just doesn't look tired, for once. She looks rested. Comfortable, even - he'd go so far as to say relaxed. The faint line across her forehead - present so often these days as she worries over something or another - that line has smoothed out into nothingness. The pinched look to her face - stress and worry and fear - is gone.  
  
Instead, Vex asleep just looks more like Vex should look when awake: content, unafraid, and rested.  
  
Percy lets her sleep.  
  
She is lying down beside him where he sits, her legs stretched out and her arms tucked up against herself. She's wrapped in her cloak, and her right arm hugs a fold of it to her, the motion poignantly similar to how a child might cuddle a favorite toy.  
  
Her head rests - completely unselfconsciously - in his lap. The back of her head lies across his thighs; her face is just slightly tilted, so that her left cheek brushes against his hip with every slow breath she takes. Her braid is pinned under her head, the plait thick and fraying, tendrils of dark hair escaping to frame her face, the braid itself drooping off of her shoulder to hang down to the lounge she lies on.  
  
Percy thinks she's beautiful, but of course he does. Sleep doesn't change that.  
  
He has a book in front of him, and his arm is actually growing a bit tired from the awkward angle he must use in order to hold it up so that it doesn't drop onto Vex's head. He is fairly adept at reading one handed - there's a trick to holding the book open with thumb and ring finger, and using a sort of pinching motion and a flick of the little finger to turn the page. But for all his dexterity, Percy hasn't turned a page in quite a while.  
  
He could move, of course. He could lift his left hand and use it to hold the book, to give his right arm a rest. He could flip the page and continue the chapter - it isn't a bad book, really; a bit dry but fairly informative. He could set the book down, even; it's growing dark out, and soon enough he won't be able to read the words on the page anyway.  
  
But Percy merely sits, reluctant for anything to change.  
  
He could lift his left hand, certainly, to help hold the book up - but his left hand is tucked underneath Vex's shoulder, the loose tail of her braid tickling against his wrist, and moving it would certainly disturb her. He could set the book down - he definitely isn't reading it any longer. But to do so would remove the excuse of why he isn't moving, and Percy isn't willing to end things quite yet.  
  
So he sits, not reading, as Vex naps beside and on him.  
  
A sharp clatter from the hallway brings his head up sharply, and Keyleth pokes her head around the door before it's fully opened. "Percy!" she says, and he waves his book at her and tries to give her a look to keep her quiet.  
  
"I - oh." And her voice drops immediately, as soon as she notices Vex asleep in his lap. "Well, that answers my question," she says, with a hint of good humor audible even in her murmured words. She steps forward, suddenly all grace, and practically glides across the floor to come to his side with silent steps.  
  
Percy marks his spot in the book with a finger, and allows his arm a reprieve. He lowers his the book, careful to keep from jostling Vex, and Keyleth drifts to stand in front of them.  
  
She looks down at Vex's sleeping face. "Vax asked me to look for her," Keyleth says in a whisper. "But I don't think it's important. How long has she been asleep?"  
  
Percy shrugs, carefully, so as not to jostle the sleeping half-elf in his lap. "An hour and a half," he tells Keyleth quietly. "Maybe more."  
  
"Oh, good," she sighs, and she lifts a slender hand. Her fingers are thin but strong, able to craft and wield and shape the very elements of the world to her will. When she brushes them across Vex's forehead, gently pushing aside wisps of loose dark hair, they're as soft and light as a downy feather floating in the air. Something silver and green sparkles in the wake of her touch, shimmering across Vex's skin and then sinking down into it; when Keyleth lifts her hand, the bruises beneath Vex's eyes are gone, and the little scrape along her chin has healed.  
  
"She's been worried, lately," Keyleth murmurs, straightening. She gives Percy a smile that is part curiosity, part gratitude. "Pike told her to take a nap, but she said she didn't want one."  
  
"Obviously she's no match for my reading material," Percy says drily, lifting his book a little. "I read a bit to her and she was asleep in minutes. Before I finished the first page, even."  
  
His finger still rests on the spot where he'd stopped reading aloud; to be honest, he hadn't read anything further once he'd noticed her breathing even out into slumber.  
  
"Good," Keyleth murmurs again, and she gives Percy a smile. Her hand comes up and pats his cheek, affection and something like pride in her eyes. "You're very good for her, Percy. And I think she's good for you. I don't know if I've told you that before."  
  
"Not in so many words," he says. And because he is actually touched, he adds quietly, "Thank you."  
  
Keyleth gives him an encouraging smile, and then turns. "Vax wanted to talk with her, but I'm sure it can wait until she's awake," she says. "You'll pass on the message when she wakes?"  
  
"I will."  
  
Keyleth pauses at the door. "Dinner in about an hour," she reminds him. "Do you need anything? Can I bring you anything?"  
  
Percy again lifts his book. "I have everything I need right here," he says, though he isn't thinking of his book when he speaks.  
  
By her smile, Keyleth knows it. "All right," she says simply. "I'll let you get back to your book."  
  
She shuts the door again, and Percy again brings up his book once the latch clicks into place. He sits without reading for long minutes, watching Vex breath as she sleeps, and only once it is obviously too dark for him to claim the book as any sort of excuse does Percy reluctantly lay it aside.  
  
He looks down at Vex's face, calm and content, and his right hand hovers above her skin.  
  
This is new, this closeness they share, this intimacy they allow each other now. He does not need permission to touch her, but it feels almost illicit to brush his fingertips across her cheeks, to gently push aside wisps of dark hair, to feel her silk-soft skin slide beneath his rough fingers. It isn't that he's afraid he'll harm her - Vex is strong, and Vex is tough, and he no longer thinks so little of himself to worry that his very touch taints her - so much as he's still constantly surprised that she has allowed him this right, this privilege of touch.  
  
He wondered for so long what her skin would feel like that it's still surreal to trace her cheekbones with his fingers, still breathtaking to cup her cheeks with his palms and rest his fingers in her hair. It is still something precious and marvelous to realize that she trusts him enough to grant him this: to realize that these touches are permitted in her sleep because they would be welcomed were she awake.  
  
It's a kindness, Percy thinks, and a wonder. Part of him hopes that he will never grow used to the thrill - the pride - at touching her. He wants his skin to tingle at each brush of his flesh against hers; he wants his pulse to pound and the whole world to narrow down to that single miraculous point of contact every time he is lucky enough to touch her. Part of him hopes the opposite, though: the greedy part of him, the part that looks to the future with unwarranted hope and avaricious dreams, that part of him yearns for the thrill to diminish if only because it will mean he has touched her enough to grow desensitized to the wonder of it. If he touches her enough, he thinks wistfully, if he can touch her every day, if her kindness lasts for years and she stays with him and this continues - surely, he thinks, that spark of awe at contact between them will fade, buried under days and months and years of touches. If he can only touch her always, if he can grow to trust that she will remain, if he loses that thrill at contact in return for decades of touch and the confidence that she is still there, still his, still whole…  
  
He wants to grow used to touching her, to the feel of her skin beneath hers, to how she tastes and how she breathes and how she speaks his name in the dark when she first wakes.  
  
But that is in the future, and that is unknown, and those are hopes and dreams he can do nothing to change. So instead he gently runs his fingertips across her skin - closed eyelids and bruises beneath them, slanted cheekbones and long nose, soft lips and firm chin - and then he sighs.  
  
"Vex," he says softly, cupping his right hand against her cheek. "Vex."  
  
"Mm," she says, eyes still closed, and she lets out a long sigh, turning her head into his hand to prolong the contact. "What time is it?"  
  
He likes how she can wake so quickly, so completely: no confusion, no grumpy stuttering, just a quiet shift to alertness and readiness. He likes how her mind is working at full speed already but her voice is still sleepy, still a bit rough; he likes her obvious unwillingness to move.  
  
"Almost dinner time, darling," he says softly, moving his left hand to her head to twist his fingers gently into her hair. The endearment still tastes new on his tongue: it's her endearment, really, borrowed because he has so little he can give to her, but he can at least offer her that mild affection back.  
  
"Mm," she hums again, but this time her eyes open. "Really? That late?"  
  
"You needed rest," he tells her. "How are you feeling?"  
  
She shifts; her cloak falls to dangle off the side of the lounge, and her toes lift and point and her arms raise in a stretch. Her head stays right where it is, though, and so Percy leaves his hands where they are.  
  
"Better," she assess after a moment. Then, sounding surprised, "Quite well, actually."  
  
Percy considers saying something about Keyleth's magic, and decides against it. "Well, sleep is a wonderful thing," he says.  
  
Her laugh is short without being bitter. "It is, when one can get it," she says, and then her whole face shifts into a smile, fond and happy. "Thank you, darling. I'm sure I didn't mean to sleep on you for hours."  
  
"It was hardly a sacrifice," he reminds her drily, and she laughs again, turning her head so that she can burrow her face into his stomach.  
  
"No," she says, voice muffled into his shirt, "I suppose not. Still. Thank you."  
  
Warmth curls in his chest, and he strokes his fingers through her hair. "Any time, darling," he says honestly, and she laughs.  
  
"I could get used to hearing that, you know," she tells him, and the obvious pleasure in her eyes takes the sting away from her absence as she sits up.  
  
"I am attempting to get used to saying it," he replies, and his words earn him another laugh.  
  
He stretches himself when he stands, and sets the book down on the lounge. "Was it a good book?" Vex asks as she moves to her feet beside him.  
  
Her hand creeps into his, finger cool and steady against his, and Percy can't help but smile. "One of my favorites," he assures her, and keeps her hand in his all the way to the dining room.


End file.
